


Ain't about what I like

by zombieboyband



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Missing Scene, The Punisher, kastle - Freeform, kind of maybe - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-31
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-05-30 06:01:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6411733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombieboyband/pseuds/zombieboyband
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before the diner, after the gunfire. City nights, late drives, looking for coffee with Frank. Karen is too tired for easy questions.</p><p>  <i>"Pardon, ma'am?" He sounds so goddamn polite it's incredible. </i></p><p>  <i>"The meat hooks. The part where you killed people and put them on meat hooks."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Ain't about what I like

He's used to driving. 

Karen wouldn't say that Frank _likes_ driving, exactly. She doesn't know that, can't know that. What she does know is that he looks comfortable behind the wheel, even when he's still tense and ready. They've been driving for what feels like hours but it's late and Karen is tired, mostly because people keep trying to kill her. Her inner clock isn't working right so she measures the passage of time not in minutes or hours, but by the changes in Frank's posture and where he rests his hand on the steering wheel. When they first flee her apartment, he's leaning forward in the driver's seat, two hands on the wheel, concentration unwavering, driving evasive. Then he's fake casual, driving like an ordinary New York denizen, mostly obeying traffic laws, but his eyes dart everywhere and his fingers twitch as he steers. Eventually he's leaning back into the seat, one arm flung over the wheel, like she's seen him drive before. He still watches the streets, checking if they're being followed--he never stops doing that. But he settles into the rhythm of it, finally, and the baseball cap shielding the most obvious of his bruises almost looks like it belongs there just for the hell of it and not as a minimalist disguise. Almost. If you glance quickly. If you don't know what to look for. If you don't know how to see.

"You wanna get some coffee?" 

Karen furrows her brow. Frank gives her one of his quick appraisals then, assessing her in a microsecond just how he evaluates the road behind them (and in front of them, and to the right and left and all diagonals) for threats.

"Make a quick stop, get something to eat. Whaddya say?" He sounds so-- _normal_. She's not sure what to do with that. 

She takes a big breath, lets it out slow. "Okay."

"Sound like you never been asked to coffee before."

"Not too often."

"Respectfully, ma'am, I doubt that."

"Not usually at this hour, then." Karen looks away from him, out into the city streets. He sounds almost, almost playful but the only thing she can picture in her mind is the look on his face before he disarmed her and tackled her and the dissonance between the raw fear in his eyes _then_ and the maybe fake maybe natural playful tone _now_ is too much. It's not literally giving her a headache but it feels like it should be. She squeezes her eyes shut, just in case, and presses her fingers to her temples.

"What?"

His voice is low and quiet but somehow carries itself right to her ears, like it stealths across the floor instead of drifting through the air. The _what_ from his mouth isn't demanding but it's not what many people could easily decipher as concerned, either.

Karen's breath is shaky with frustration. "You put people on meat hooks."

He glances out the side window this time, not at her. "Yeah. Yeah, I did."

"You put people on meat hooks but you'll tackle me and use your own body as a shield so that I don't get shot. We're looking for coffee but we both know you're not done with murder and I'm just _tired_. I've almost died a lot of times today."

"Hrm." It's not how other people make the noise; it's not a hum. It's a rumbling sound, kind of like a grunt, kind of like the sound a big dog makes when you make him come inside out of the rain. He's still not looking at her.

"Did you like it?" 

"Pardon, ma'am?" He sounds so goddamn polite; it's incredible and, right now, mildly infuriating. It makes Karen's jaw clench.

"The meat hooks. The part where you killed people and put them on meat hooks." She stops, considers her words, and then suppresses a shrug. "Or you put people on meat hooks and then killed them. Either. Both. You did both."

"Did I like it?" His face scrunches and his fingers fly off the wheel, though his palm stays firm and he steers steady. "That what you think? You think this is some kind of fucked up serial killer bullshit, that I, what, enjoy it, it's fun and games for me?"

"I don't know what to think."

"It's not about that."

"If not that, then _what_?"

"War."

Karen shakes her head. "Meat hooks, Frank."

"Psychological warfare. Ain't about what I _like_ , ma'am. It's about how it looks, it's about how it makes the scumbags back at base feel. It's so they know what's coming for them, so they think about it all the damn time, so they can't sleep without seeing it behind their eyelids. So that when I get them, they're scared, they're tired. It's about getting in their heads, fucking them up before I'm even near the bastards."

Silence. Then, firm and quiet, he finishes: "They deserve to be afraid."

Karen doesn't know if he's been looking at her because she's keeping her eyes locked on the road ahead. Afraid. She's afraid, right now. She's afraid of so much. She's afraid she's going to die tonight, or tomorrow, or soon. She's afraid that in her heart of hearts, she might not disagree with Frank. _They deserve to be afraid_. Maybe it was true.

"Hours. No. Days," Karen says, still looking ahead, seeing nothing out the window, seeing only things in her head, seeing nothing but the look on his face, that _look_ before he tackled her. Did Frank deserve to be afraid? Whether he did or didn't, he'd felt afraid. Not the kind of afraid that was quiet, not the kind of afraid that was subtle. No. It was fear so loud in his eyes that it screamed, that it echoed inside her, still. "I spent hours every day looking at your crime scene photos. Do you know that?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I do."

"Are you proud of that one? Of the meat hooks?" she asks. He doesn't sound proud. She's watching him now, watching how he fidgets for a second, how his eyes dart to the side before he fixes them straight ahead again. It's a long time before he speaks, but finally:

"I take pride in the fact that none of those cartel assholes lived another day, that they never distributed any more product, that they never sold another hit of their supply to some dumbass college kid who ODs in the bathroom, that they never killed another cop, that they never conscripted another child solider to put in the front lines to get shot at first."

It's way too late at night and Karen is way too tired to argue ethics out loud. She buries her face in her hands. Her hair, she can feel her hair is wrecked. She wants a hairbrush, and maybe her life back. When she looks up her lips are pressed together but her eyes are dry--just tired, so tired. "I'll take that coffee now, please," she says, even though it's a lie, even though she doesn't want that at all.

He doesn't say anything else and they cruise through the night in a silence that at least looks companionable as it stretches out. It's not that he's being choosy: it's just that everything's closed, even the places that look open. Frank finds a flashing outline of a coffee cup, but the neon lights blink out of darkness that's several rooms wide and deep. Karen points at a sign leading to 24 hour kebabs, but that turns out to be permanently closed, the storefront boarded up. They slow dive past a diner with a bright OPEN sign but it looks even more closed than the lying coffee cup.

"The city that never sleeps," Karen mutters. "So much for that."

"The city sleeps. We don't."

"I'd like to argue that, but I can't."

Abruptly, Frank takes the next turn. "There's still places. We're just in the wrong ones."

Karen swallows her laugh because she knows it would be a bitter thing to taste in the air. "That's so true it hurts."

"Wasn't meant to."

"I know." She doesn't look at him because she doesn't want to see his expression, and she knows he's making one, clenching his jaw or making those damn downcast eyes that make him look somehow younger even when he's more bruise than face.

How literally does a man like Frank take the word _hurt_? She doesn't know. She's never met a man like Frank before. There might not be any men like Frank to meet. 

She wants to tell him that it's fine. But it's not. Nothing is fine. It feels like nothing will be fine ever again. Why lie to him? She's tired of liars.

Karen presses her body into the car seat like she's asking it to hold her. "It's just an expression," she whispers, half hoping her voice is too low to hear, half resigned to the fact that for Frank, it's probably not.

Mercifully, he doesn't say anything. He's driving down a street that has a few people scattered around, and a few places lit with the dingy glow of legitimately 24/7 dives.

When he picks a diner and parks Karen takes too long to gather herself together and he has time to walk over and open her door. Casual, casual. It's not like he rushed. She's just stuck in the car, like she's forgotten how to move, and he waits without rushing her, not even looking at her, because he's glancing left and right and taking the night in, scanning for threats. Always. He's always ready.

Karen wonders if she'd recognize him any other way.

**Author's Note:**

> I dunno about you guys, but I always just end up in Koreatown when I visit New York and it's 4 AM. This is first in a vaguely planned series. Come hang out on tumblr at [@stormthekastle](http://stormthekastle.tumblr.com/).


End file.
